A videogame warning

Let’s hear the good news first.

Video gaming is at an all-time high. Madden 2004, the new NFL game, will undoubtedly outsell even the highest-grossing Hollywood movie last year, Chicago. And it’s not even the most popular videogame in the world. And it seems that FIFA Soccer and NBA Live permutations are going to be drawing people in by the millions. Videogame manufacturers are even planning to go on-line full blast, and hold their own world championships, with hundreds of thousands of participants all over the planet.

According to the latest issue of Fortune magazine, the motion picture, music and technology industries are either down or bottoming out, but the videogame market is booming. EA, the current king of sports game-makers, is averaging a 20% return on its investment, quadruple that of a giant in the industry, AOL (America Online). Fortune estimates that the average American used to spend about 30 hours a year playing videogames. That number is now climbing to the 150-hour range.

Now for the bad news. Videogames aren’t good for you.

Studies have shown that videogames may have harmful effects on people in general, more so for children below 12 years of age. Apparently, there are physiological functions of the human body that television-watching and computer-viewing interrupt.

First of all, the human eye is supposed to move five to six times every second. When you keep your eyes on a computer screen or watch a television program, that movement is lowered to one to two movements per second. That already has the effect of slowing down some of your bodily functions. In addition, the human eye is meant to be constantly on the move. Like a camera lens, the way an eyeball flexes its muscles is by flitting from one object to another, over different distances. But when you park yourself in front of a monitor, you pin your eyes to a fixed distance, which causes the muscles to atrophy, and strains the eyes. Your eyes tend to tire and deteriorate the more you watch television or use a computer straight.

On top of all that, there are adverse psychological effects, as well. On television and in computer games, everything is instant. Results are accelerated and do not happen in the normal time frame that they should in the real world. As a result, children who grow up on videogames have a tendency to be impatient, and cannot bear to wait for things to unfold. Proof of this is how hard it is to get young people to read through a book nowadays.

One deep-seated reason for this is that, as a child, you control your experiences. When you choose an object to experience, you determine the totality of that experience. As an infant or toddler, when you see something that interests you, you pick it up, and use all your senses to take it in. You examine, touch, smell, listen to and even taste something to get a better understanding of it. And you do this at your own pace.

But, with the fast pace of editing and movement of computer games, that right of determination is taken away from you. Your experiences are controlled by outside forces. The effect, which may not be felt right away, is one of confusion and frustration. A certain freedom to experience has been taken away, your right to decide how and how long you experience something. Attached to this, your own imagination may be stunted. Even grade-school teachers in Europe report that, when they ask young children to draw characters from fairy tales and fables, they get uniform responses. A teacher in a grade school in Germany told this writer that, she once asked her students to draw Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid. They all drew Ariel, the character from the Walt Disney version, and refused to accept any other. I wonder if kids who play sports games will accept the real thing when they see a game live.

Also, kids are meant to be exerting themselves, moving around and exploring their world. Haven’t you noticed how kids are either drained or hyperactive after sitting in front of a computer for a long time? That’s because their bodies are telling them they aren’t meant to be still. They’re built to expand their boundaries. That’s called growth.

One other impact of this is felt in network television and the computer industry itself. Programming, one of the bastions of creativity, is starting to find a hard time discovering new talent because more and more young people have had their imaginations fed to them.

Now let’s talk about sports in particular. Unless you play bridge or some other predominantly strategic and static game, spending a lot of time on the computer version will not help you improve though the world’s best car players all resort to practicing on computerized versions of the game, their case is unique. And after having spent so many hours playing computer games, do you really remember anything that you did? Is there a lasting feeling of accomplishment, or are you looking for what’s next? And how are you going to learn a team game when you’re either playing by yourself, or with someone who’s at a separate terminal?

It is far better for a child to lace up his sneakers and get out there and sweat with all the other sports junkies. That way, he’ll feel the full sensation of building his craft as an athlete, and make decisions on his own. He’ll experience frustration and elation on his own terms, with constructive guidance.

Take them out to the ballgame. They’ll thank you for it. Because if you use the computer as a baby-sitter, you’ll end up with a next generation that’s fat, dull and possessed of poor eyesight.

And we don’t need any more politicians.

Don’t miss this week’s episode of The Basketball Show at 4 p.m. over IBC-13.